Sunday, June 19, 2011

? (for other EE moms)

The GI wanted to wait until after Tyler's 2nd scope and "personal baseline" before starting food(s) that had reactions on the patch test. The scope is done so we started apples last night. He ate some. By some I mean 2 tablespoons. We tried again this afternoon and he took a small bite then wasn't interested. He refused the apples by turning his head while also pushing the spoon away with his hand. It's crazy how quickly all the memories came rushing back from when he was 9 months old. We are lucky though, at least he isn't screaming the second we put him in the highchair.

My question is.... how aggressive do we get with food trials after being on an elemental diet for 4ish weeks? I am not sure what he is trying to tell us. I don't know if it is from negative food association or if he is starting to react internally and doesn't feel good. He is 3 days post-op of g-tube placement so not having a hearty appetite is expected. I am just wondering when do we let him to guide us and when do we push a little more? (Past experience has shown that if we let him guide us, he probably wouldn't be alive cause he has always hated food.)

6 comments:

  1. That's a hard one. So he's reacted to apples before? He may have an oral allergy to them which would start fairly quickly, right? Maybe making his mouth itch?

    Have you tried letting him be in charge of part of the eating? Maybe dumping some applesauce on his tray and giving him something truly ridiculous to eat it with. Say a curly straw, a spoon with a huge handle, fingers or a silicone basting brush. Then while he's goofing around, sneak a few bites in.

    Would a smoothie work better than "table food"? Maybe as a way to reintroduce the idea of eating? Has he been seen by an OT for food aversions? They have some cool tricks too:) Sorry for the million questions.

    Also don't forget how stubborn kids are at this age. It is not unusual for a toddler his age to not want to sit formally and eat, even without his food history. Try a different location in the house or set-up a drive-by food station where he can run by grab a mouth-full and move on. You can reintroduce table time later when he's more comfortable with eating.

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  2. We're trialing fish and Oliver is not liking it so much! He really seemed to like it the first few times he had it, but now he just picks at it. I offer him some everyday, though, but I don't force him. I wonder if he knows that this food makes him feel not good (I'm suspecting a fail, but I know it's too soon to know for sure).

    Hang in there. Offer it up in different forms (I'm assuming you're giving him applesauce, but you might try giving him a whole apple to see what he does) or just put it in front of him with a spoon and then sit next to him and eat some yourself.

    I think that even if he's just eating a little bit each day, he'll eventually have enough in his system for you to know if it's a fail or not, maybe?

    Oh, and I'm so glad that his g-tube insertion went well!

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  3. There is something I found and printed once with the title of. Single ingredient cooking. It is very helpful try and google it and if. You can't find it I will scan it. I agree with FFT let him feed himself. We do play room picnics, popsicles in the baby pool. I agree traditional meal time is out the window.

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  4. I know you posted this question a while ago but I just found your blog and have a suggestion if you're still having this problem. My son has EE and a feeding tube. He had a severe oral aversion which led me to wonder how do you do food trials if your kid won't eat. Through a support group I was lucky enough to find out about an amazing feeding therapist Marsha Dunn Klein. She worked with my son for a while and she is an advocate of blenderized diet. I knew we couldn't do a blenderized diet because his diet was so restricted but when we started food trials it gave me the idea to do a partial blenderized diet. When I wanted to trial carrots I just bought baby food carrots and mixed some with his formula and put it through his tube. It doesn't work with all foods of course I doubt something like pasta or chicken would go through the tube without getting stuck but it might get you started with food trials.

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  5. Also are you in AZ? I just noticed your son has the same allergist as mine.

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  6. He's made huge improvements with eating orally, but still relies on the tube for some nutrition. We went to feeding therapy for a while and the information we got from Marsha Dunn Klein was a huge help! As far as the EE goes we haven't really made any progress since he was diagnosed almost a year a half ago. We kept taking away more and more foods and his scopes still kept getting worse. Then we tried flovent/pulmicort but still no improvement. So his GI decided to put him on prednisone which allows him to eat and keeps the EE under control but has horrible side effects and can't be used for very long. We don't know what the next step is I'm just hoping since he finally started eating we won't have to take food away completely.

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